Interviews: Trip Questions

Trip questions are questions that will be asked during an interview, with one of three purposes:

To rattle you and see how you react to pressure

To test your motivation

To investigate an issue or subject around which there might be some sensitivity

Questions designed to rattle you:

Such
questions intend to make you uncomfortable, in order to see how you act
under pressure or in difficult situations. An interviewer’s opening
line could be, “I don’t have much time for this”, or “The recruiter had
to fight hard to get you into this interview. I hope it’s going to be
worth my time”. These questions are clearly quite rude, but they’re also
designed to rattle you.

Questions designed to test your motivation:

It’s
natural that the interviewer would want to test what your real
motivations for applying are. It’s possible that you could get a
question along the lines of: “I know your interviewing for this
position, but wouldn’t you really rather be going for [a different]
vacancy?”. Alternatively, former coaching clients of mine have been
asked: “I’m sure you think that this company represents a good port in
the storm, but how do we know that you’re not going to up and leave once
the market conditions improve?”

Questions designed to investigate areas of sensitivity:

It’s
highly like that there are topics you are a bit touchy about, and would
rather not be brought up in interview. This could be relating to an
unfair or unpleasant dismissal, poor exam results, and so on. However,
precisely because it will make you feel uncomfortable and might press
the wrong button, an interview might throw a sensitive question in your
direction.

If you had been let go by your former company in what
was a shoddy manner, and in your rehearsal with the interviewer who's
especially asking you about the context of your departure from Company
X, in order to see your reaction. It is more safe not to proceeded to go
on a rant about the context of your dismissal, which was clearly a sore
spot. This needs to be anticipated as this might come up and practiced
how to answer in a calm and composed manner. You must be able to answer
it confidently and cooly in the real interview.

How to deal with trip questions?

There are five key ways to deal with trip questions in an interview:

Anticipate any issues that you think may come up and rehearse your answer. Compose sensible, level-headed answers in advance

During the interview process itself, recognise that a ‘trip question’ has been asked - and have some fun with it

Embrace
the fact you have been asked a ‘trip question’: after all, if they
weren’t interested in you as a candidate, they wouldn’t bother

Remain
un-reactive and solid in your sense of self-belief. nAlways answer the
question, and make sure you do so in a level-headed and composed manner.